Thirty-some years ago, finally divorced after months of marital and individual counseling and hours of agony trying to understand it all, I was settling in my hometown with three kids and a regular visitation schedule to their dad.
Alone, every other weekend, I had nothing to do, except fret and wonder what was happening while they were 110 miles away visiting him and his new wife.
Surely, the new wife was stepping in when he couldn’t give them his full attention. Wasn’t she? And if she weren’t, there was my oldest. Even at age 10, she would tell me if something were amiss. Wouldn’t she?
I was working as a single mom at a preschool, making ends meet with my spousal and child support. With three kids, I rarely had time to read anything but Frog and Toad or Hank the Cowdog.
We couldn’t afford cable, so mostly, I sat alone during those weekend visits and watched the local PBS station and fretted. I couldn’t concentrate on novels, and pulling out a poetry anthology to soothe my troubled heart was never a blip on my radar, even though I’d been an English Education major in college.
As an undergrad, I sat through numerous survey courses of British Lit and American Lit of various eras. But I was never a fan of poetry. I sometimes instinctively felt their emotion, but my mind often snapped closed. I just couldn’t understand it, so I avoided anything in verse- or worse, anything called poetry but without verse.
Much later, as a teacher, I understood why I hated it so much.
During one of those lonely single-parent weekends, I picked up a newspaper as a distraction. Buried between ads in a column inch or two was a brief blurb about a poetry contest. An organization in West Virginia promised 34 cash prizes for poems on any subject that were fewer than 20 lines long.
Could I do that? I certainly had enough overbrimming emotion to inspire a poem.
Thinking maybe some distraction would help, I picked up a pencil and notebook.
I began to scribble as I watched a bird out the window. My troubled, ignorant brain played with words and images and emotion. Not counting syllables, not marking scansion. That understanding would come later.
But I worked hard, finding the right word, the best phrase to convey my angst about myself and about my kids. Crossing out lines, drawing arrows, canceling entire stanzas.
Poetry- writing my own- spoke to me in a way it never had before. It was a start and a release.
What emerged wouldn’t qualify as great art, but the process of writing it calmed me. I wrote about my anxiety. I released it in just the exact words that spoke to me in that instant.
Did I win the contest?
No.
Thinking back, I’m not even sure that I submitted the poem.
But I found it tucked away in a manila folder yesterday. On its typed sheet, I had taped the newspaper blurb, now yellowed and a reminder of what prompted me to consider a different kind of writing that would ease the heaviness in my heart.
I also found my journal from those days, but that’s another tale… or two.
The poem is a reminder to me.
“Write for yourself,” it shouts. “Write to heal; write to celebrate! Even if you never send it to a contest or publish it, just write.”
And for that reason alone, this poem may be frame worthy. In my house, just for me!
My Fledgling
My nest is not yet empty;
The first one flew last night.
I thought I spied a pinfeather,
As she soared out of sight.
Has she all the flying skills
She’ll need for the distance?
Will she use the strong currents,
And brace for resistance?
Once there, who will she find-
One who sings and soars each day?
Or will she find quite another,
The uneven-tempered jay?
When she returns, as she must,
To our nest where she cries,
Can mother’s wing be enough
‘Til next the fledgling flies?
